Microsoft has made new installation media for Windows 10, Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022 available in its Visual Studio Subscriptions portal (formerly MSDN). The January 2024 Refresh ISO installation media was released on January 18, 2024, but was created on January 4, 2024, and will create a system with a patch level of January 9, 2024 for a new Windows installation.
[German]How do you know that Windows Defender and its configuration is correctly implemented and working? I just came across a demonstration and test page from Microsoft. Microsoft provides various files and information there to demonstrate, test and validate the Defender rules for ASR, PUA, SmartScreen etc.
[German]Small addendum to the December 2023 patchday, during which an information disclosure vulnerability (CVE-2023-35636) was also closed. It has now become known that even the acceptance of a calendar invitation by a user can reveal their password. While this vulnerability in Outlook has been patched, there are other methods to retrieve an NTLM hash, e.g. via a file manager. These vulnerabilities are not patched. Here is an overview of the issue.
[German]A quick question for Microsoft 365 administrators with Exchange Online tenants. A reader is struggling with the problem that mails are sorted into quarantine at his customers and asks whether this function is broken (presumably already since January 5, 2024).
Recently I became aware of the "Security Technical Implementation Guide". The Security Technical Implementation Guide is published as a tool to improve the security of Department of Defense (DOD) information systems. The requirements are derived from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 800-53 and related documents.
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[German]Microsoft has been successfully hacked by the Russian state hacker group Midnight Blizzard, also known as Nobelium. This was noticed on January 12, 2024, but the hackers were probably in the systems for months and were able to view and exfiltrate emails. The next major hack after the attack by the Chinese group Storm-0558 from May to June 2023.
[German]I'll put two topics in one post. At the end of October 2023, Microsoft extended the list of CPUs approved for Windows 11 so that older processor models are also supported (had not reported on this in the blog). Now a blog reader has contacted me because he is surprised that Windows 11 is offered on systems in his "corporate environment" where the CPU is not on the compatibility list. Does the hardware check for installing Windows 11 fail? Or have CPU restrictions been removed?
[German]Brief note to the my readers, perhaps someone has observed something similar with customers or within its enterprise environments. It seems that some IP addresses that can be assigned to Microsoft mail servers have ended up on blacklists. It may then no longer be possible to send mails from these mail servers, as they are rejected by the recipient during a check.
[German]Addendum from the January 2024 patchday, where numerous users run into install error 0x80070643 with update KB5034441. This update is intended to fix a vulnerability relating to Bitlocker encryption in the WinRE environment. There are workarounds, but they are too complicated for most users and also administrators supporting thousands of Windows 10/11 clients. However, Microsoft confirmed on January 18, 2024, that they are working on a fix for these issues and intends to deliver it at some point. At the same time, it was announced that Microsoft wants to harden Secure Boot and block insecure boot environments from April 2024. I summarize the status below.
[German]On January 16, 2023, the developers of VirtualBox released both version 7.0.14 and the update to version 6.1.50. Both versions are maintenance updates for bug fixes, as you can read on the Virtualbox page. Here is a brief overview of the fixes.
MVP:
2013 – 2016
WIMVP:
2017 – 2020
